BEARscc determines robustness of single-cell clusters using simulated technical replicates

Technical variance is a major confounding factor in single-cell RNA sequencing, not least because it is not possible to replicate measurements on the same cell. We present BEARscc, a tool that uses RNA spike-in controls to simulate experiment-specific technical replicates. We demonstrate that the tool improves the unsupervised classification of cells and facilitates the biological interpretation of single-cell RNA-seq experiments.